Gm gamers and scrubs.

Tom has taken a break from his CS2 rating grind to speak to people IRL at Zebu Live in London. If you are in town for the conference, say hi! Griff, on the other hand, has survived the Brooklyn Tsunami and an internet outage, so it’s been a rough week. For some dopamine watch, one of No Re’s frens pull a knife.

Anyways, you know the program by now, but here’s the slate for the noobs:

• Zebu Live’s Gaming Track Initial thoughts

• Change Log

• LINKing Web3 Gaming with CCIP

• Other News

Zebu Live

The first day of Zebu Live, a two-day web3 event in London, is over, and they had a track of a few talks during the day relating to Web3 gaming. My notes and brain are fried, so a detailed post will be coming soon, but I’ll be dropping some of the takes that come to the front of my mind.

How can web3 gaming go mass market?

Mod: Blockchain Gaming Alliance / Panel: Playember, SHRAPNEL, Trilitech

Great start to the day with a panel including SHRAPNEL, a game we are eagerly awaiting early access for in December. The panel agreed that the thought of a “mainstream gamer” is still way too broad. My mom might be a Candy Crush addict, and I might be a Counterstrike fiend, but we play games for very different reasons. There is no generalized mass adoption audience—projects still need to jump into the weeds with products and who will be playing their games to succeed.

GameFi killed Web3 Gaming: Are we teetering on the edge of a precipice?

Mod: Flight3 / Panel: Hundreds & Thousands, CafeCosmos, Clarnium, Metacade

A bit of a left-field take was hearing that all web3 games are shit and that they will all fail. The basis of this thought is that web2 games, with their committed player bases, are better off educating and bringing these users to web3 for mass adoption. A web3 native game has a bigger task of building “non-ponzi” token mechanics as well as dealing with the bad reputation of crypto or blockchain games.

Unlocking the Ultimate Gaming Metaverse: Secrets to Success

Mod: Cassiopeia Services / Panel: Animoca, ChainGuardians, Alien Worlds, Fabric Ventures

All panelists agreed that the core gameplay loop is essential as it forms the foundation of a game, aka games need to be fun. BUT, any additional layers, whether they’re monetization strategies, social dynamics, or meta games, need to be built upon a strong core gameplay loop to be effective and engaging.

Change Log

• Spider Tanks launched Spider Friends v2 with increased tier rewards and a new referral system.

• LINE NEXT launched its second web3 game, Sweet Monster Guardians, on GAME DOSI.

• Moonlit Games added weekly leaderboard tournaments to Rogue Nation.

• Axie Infinity Origins Season 6 is live with 112k AXS in rewards, balancing and mechanic updates, and more.

• Gods Unchained shared upcoming updates ahead of season 2.

• Midnight Society updated the Deaddrop website for Snapshot 7 with new language about “Driver Keys” (crates and skins) and hinted at a potential marketplace.

• Planet Quest launched its first playable demo, Outposts.

LINKing Web3 Gaming with CCIP

LINK is slowly moving toward becoming a gaming token thanks to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). CCIP is an interoperability protocol and foundation for blockchain abstraction layers, which allow traditional backends and dapps to interact across networks through a single integration.

Currently in an “early access” stage of development, the CCIP docs highlight common use cases, including cross-chain lending and yield, low-cost computation, and “creating new kinds of dapps.” Though not explicitly stated, recent initiatives from Chainlink and early CCIP participants show that there’s another top-of-mind use case for CCIP: web3 gaming.

Last week, we highlighted Polychain Monsters’ transition to Base via CCIP following Chainlink’s Base integration. This week, we got another CCIP web3 gaming announcement in the form of a partnership with Korean gaming giant and WEMIX blockchain developer Wemade.

Under the partnership, CCIP will be the exclusive interoperability engine for Wemade’s omnichain initiative unagi. Chainlink Labs was additionally granted membership in COURT (Certified Organizations for Unagi Round Table), joining their mission to unify an omnichain ecosystem and create an interoperable web3 game ecosystem.

Though not a direct CCIP-related announcement, Chainlink also invited the Avalanche-based horse racing game NEOBRED to its BUILD incubator, making it the second game to join the program behind Polygon’s Planet IX. As part of the incubator, NEOBRED will receive support from Chainlink and early access to new features, including CCIP.

CCIP demonstrates clear advantages for web3 games in terms of interoperability, reducing compute, and connecting web3 games to traditional gaming engines like Unity and Unreal. Although Chainlink Labs hasn’t announced a major gaming initiative, it’s pretty clear that one is already on the way.

Other News

• Star Atlas’ SAGE Labs is exceeding 1M transactions per day, accounting for ~3% of all Solana blockchain transactions.

• Netmarble’s web3 gaming subsidiary Mabrex received regulatory approval to list its gaming token MBX on the Japanese exchange Zaif on October 11.

• The Big Blockchain Gaming List added 90 games in the past month for a total of 177 new games in Q3—up 19% from the previous quarter.

• NexGami (formerly Light eSports) raised $2M in a seed funding round at a valuation of $20M.

• Animoca Brands Japan partnered with Drecom to support web3 gaming growth in Japan and a focus on Eternal Crypt - Wizardry BC.

• Immutable shared their roadmap for “mainnet & beyond,” including the release of 40+ games.